by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)
*6 “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”
*7 “Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”
*8 Dr. Morgan Lake (1835–?) graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1861 and practiced as a physician from her graduation onward, moving through reservation lands in Oklahoma and Kansas, before returning to her birthplace, Ohio, to serve as a surgeon. In honor of her sisters, Elaine, Margaret, and Moon, and her mother, Rain, Dr. Lake founded the Lake Erie Women’s Hospital in 1910 and subsequently traversed the region, bringing medical care to women and children. Dr. Lake traveled internationally and published widely. She never married.
*9 The reporter Dred Moore (1875– ) made his name at the Chicago Record and beyond, but scholars speculate that Moore was more involved in events than he portrayed himself to be. His coverage of the May Day riots in Cleveland in 1894, for example, depicts an unnamed instigator leading a mob of 4,000 men through the streets, arming them with clubs and stones. Dred Moore himself had, just prior to the riots, posted dispatches from Washington, D.C., where he was wounded at a political rally. Though it seems impossible he could have covered the Cleveland riots in person, even in black-and-white photos, a man of 6 feet 5 inches with albino coloration stands out. In photos of the riots, Moore’s image recurs, fist raised. In at least one photograph, blood seeps through his shirt. His career after the events in Washington, D.C., continued to be in service of justice, covering protests, riots, and uprisings.
Heartbeat
Waubgeshig Rice
“Out of the way, Fart!”
Art felt a heavy blow to his back that threw him forward to the ground. He put up his hands in time to break his fall and protect his face from the playground gravel. Rolling onto his back, he looked up at the perpetrator. Unsurprisingly, it was Chuck, the biggest kid in his class.
“Why you always gotta be in my way?” the bully bellowed. Art looked away from his mocking eyes. He still couldn’t breathe after being dropped by one of Chuck’s broad shoulders. The burly twelve-year-old was more than a match for anyone in the schoolyard, yet he frequently focused his aggression on scrawny Art. It had been going on for years now.
Art felt his lungs open up, and a sharp rush of air entered. His relief was short-lived, though, as the taunting continued.
“God damn it, Fart, answer me!”
Art pushed himself up in the gravel. He noticed a tear in the left knee of his jeans and pictured his mother’s angry face. These were new and supposed to last him the whole school year, which was only a few weeks old. Art looked up at Chuck, clad in denim himself from shoulders to shoes, like he thought he was Bruce Springsteen or something.
“I dunno, Chuck, what do you want me to say?” sighed Art.
“Oh, you being a smart-ass now?”
Much of the lunch hour crowd had inched closer to watch. Art didn’t want any more trouble, so he tried his best to defuse the situation. No one else would.
“No, I’m not. Sorry for being in your way,” he said, resigned, brushing his black hair across his forehead and out of his eyes.
“God damn right you’re in my way. Best to stay out of it!” Chuck commanded.
Art said nothing and lifted his skinny frame to his feet to dust himself off. The rest of the kids slowly turned back to their original lunchtime activities, like playing catch or gossiping. None came to check on Art. As humiliated as he was, he’d become hardened by years of abuse, mostly at the hands of the kid who called him Fart. Inside, he always wanted to cry but knew he could never show weakness. Not as he was now approaching his teens, anyway.
Chuck scoffed and turned to look for his next victim. He was the alpha male of the playground, in size if nothing else. He made his way to the brick wall where some of the other boys had gathered.
Meanwhile, Art walked to the front doors of the school: he would spend the rest of the lunch hour inside. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but there was no one for him among his classmates. His only real friends were his cousins of various ages, who were also navigating the social structure of middle school. He didn’t expect them to stand with him to resolve every dispute, but there were enough of them around that he hoped at least one would be there once in a while when Chuck acted up. Today was not that day.
He entered his grade-seven classroom, where his teacher Debbie was eating her lunch. She looked up from a magazine. “Hey, you’re supposed to be…” she began before noticing the tear and dirt on his jeans. She chewed hard a few more times and swallowed. “Well, you may as well get a start on your homework, then.” Art was aware that Debbie knew the schoolyard score and that he was down in points. Way down.
The afternoon classes were uneventful, with Debbie rolling through history and geography for the dozen students she had in grade seven. The school had an enrollment of barely one hundred; the community was small. Art had noticed that attendance was always steady this early in the fall, but it would begin to drop come hunting season. And in the past two years, he’d seen the general apathy of adolescence gradually set in, too.
After the last bell went, Art waited outside the front doors for his younger siblings. Jennifer, in grade five, would usually be out first, and then the twins, Tasha and Tobias, both in grade three, would follow. The younger ones were always slower to get their shoes and coats on. Art then led them on the twenty-minute walk home. It was always the same: the young ones kept up the chatter, while Art kept them as far to the left-hand side of the dirt road as possible, out of harm’s way.
They turned left onto the driveway to their two-bedroom bungalow. The rickety wooden stairs up to the front door were nearly stripped of paint, having endured decades of the elements in a Great Lakes climate, from pounding rain to lake-effect snow. Art was the last in the door, and immediately his mother, Theresa, noticed his torn jeans. “What the hell happened to those? I just bought them for you!” she blurted in place of saying hello.
“I tripped on the playground at school,” Art replied, keeping his eyes down.
His mother shook her head, not caring if it was a lie or not. The jeans cost a lot of money, and Art knew she was still trying to figure out a food budget for the coming weeks after spending a full paycheck on school clothes and supplies for all four kids. “Well, go take them off and put them on my sewing bench. I’ll patch them up later. And keep your feet up, boy!”
Art shuffled to the bedroom he shared with all three of his younger siblings. Privacy was nearly impossible in this house, which his father Albert had also grown up in. He went to the wooden dresser that held all his clothes and some personal belongings like books, his baseball glove, his notepad, and other special items—like the small eagle feather elder Merle gave him that he hadn’t told his parents about. The dresser was the one space in Art’s home that he could call his own. He pulled out a pair of gray track pants and got changed.
Supper was served as soon as Albert returned home from work at the pulp-and-paper mill in the nearby town. Art wasn’t sure what his father did for nine hours every day, but he knew it was hard work. Albert was a tall man with broad shoulders, a thick chest, and sharp brown eyes that seemed to bear years far beyond the thirty-five he’d lived so far. He always looked tired and moved slowly; pain in his joints from a life of labor that went back to his childhood at residential school. Starting in 1957, when Albert was taken from his parents at the young age of seven, he did more work than
learning at the state-funded schools that were set up to erase his Anishinaabe culture.
Despite all the trauma and tragedy he experienced as a child—that continued to linger well into adulthood—Albert maintained a kind facade. He was steadfast in his resolve not to pass any of his trauma on to his children. So was Theresa, also a residential school survivor. But the frustration and exhaustion of keeping a home was often too much for her, and she lost her temper on the children here and there and resented Albert for his daily escapes to his job from their sometimes chaotic home life.
“Aanii! Is it time to eat yet?” Albert burst through the front door and into the kitchen with a wide grin on his face. He had a shopping bag full of chips and other junk food in one hand, and a twelve-pack of stubby brown bottles of beer under his other arm. It was Friday night, after all. The older children waited for him at the table, while the twins ran to hug his legs and welcome him home. Theresa strained a pot of spaghetti noodles at the sink.
Albert took off his worn brown work boots and hung up his dusty jacket as the twins went back to their spots at the table. He kissed Theresa on the cheek on his way to join the kids before she dumped the pasta into another bowl. She followed, carrying all the food with her. She put the two large bowls down on the middle of the table and took her spot at the end opposite her husband. The twins sat on one side, while Art and Jennifer sat on the other.
“So how was everyone’s day?” Albert asked as the children dished the spaghetti and simple meat sauce onto their plates and passed it on.
“Good,” replied Jennifer.
“We played soccer!” shouted the twins in unison.
“Was it fun?” said their father.
“Yep, I even scored!” Tobias proudly proclaimed.
Albert turned to his left to look at Art. “What about you, boy? How was school?”
“All right, I guess.”
“He ripped his new jeans,” muttered Theresa from across the table.
Albert’s brow furrowed. “What happened?”
“Nothing, it’s no big deal,” said Art.
“I can fix them,” Theresa reassured them.
Everyone became quiet. Metal forks tapped and scraped against plastic plates to scoop and twirl the noodles.
Albert changed the subject. “So what’s everyone wanna do this weekend?”
“Swimming!” shouted the twins in unison.
“Hmmm, it might be too cold now.”
“Awwwww!”
“What about you, boy?”
Art secretly hoped he wouldn’t be asked. He hadn’t been invited by anyone to do anything in particular. The sparse friendships he had with some of his peers weren’t quite reliable or trustworthy. No one else really wanted to associate with a regular target of the bullies.
“Uh, not sure yet,” he replied. “Maybe do some fishing.”
“Better not, bud. I just told the twins not to go by the water.”
“All right. Maybe I’ll go over and see Uncle Merle, then.”
Albert looked up at Theresa. Their eyes locked and her lips tightened. She didn’t like the elder, and he was apprehensive about his son’s interest in Merle and his ways.
“What are you gonna do over there, then?” Theresa asked.
“I dunno. Just listen to some stories.”
She looked at Albert again, who raised his eyebrows almost innocently. It was his turn to interrogate their son.
“What kinda stories does he tell you when you visit?”
“I dunno, just, like, about the old days around here and stuff.” Art kept his eyes fixed on the fork he was spinning on his plate. “It’s kinda cool, just to hear about our history.”
“And that’s all you do over there?”
“Yeah.”
The table was silent again for a moment. The younger children continued to eat. Theresa’s eyes darted back and forth between her eldest son and her husband. She cocked her head to the side with one last glance to Albert, deferring the decision to him.
“All right, you can go over there in the morning,” Albert said. “But I need you back here at lunchtime to help me get some wood piled for the winter.”
Art nodded, not looking at either parent. Even at this young age, he’d learned how to conceal relief and joy.
“And you bet your ass we’re going to church on Sunday morning!” Theresa added. “I don’t trust Merle and all that ‘medicine’ he talks about. It’s time for us to move on from all that stuff. Us Indians don’t live like that no more.”
Art tried to ignore the last comment and lifted a forkful of pasta into his mouth. He thought about the tiny medicine bundle of tobacco, sweetgrass, sage, and cedar he had stashed deep in his middle drawer and wondered if he should consider a hiding place for it outside the house.
With fall approaching, the sun rose later with each passing day. Art tried his best to be up for a personal sunrise ceremony before the rest of the family awoke. Sometimes he’d sneak outside as quietly as possible to give an offering of tobacco as the purple sky got brighter in the east. He’d say a quick prayer of thanks and lay the semaa—as it was called in their Anishinaabe language—by a tree.
But trying to quietly escape the house at this time of year was tricky, because there was a good chance someone would be up. So as the small bedroom brightened in the morning light, he opened his eyes and recited a few lines of thanks in his head. He looked up at the tiled ceiling, stained brown at the cracks from water leaks through the roof, and thanked the Creator for his family and for everyone’s good health. He gave thanks for the land around them that kept them fed and healthy. He asked for peace for his entire community. He ended his thoughts and whispered, “Miigwech.”
“Are you talking in your sleep again?” Jennifer broke the silence from her bed across the room. Her question startled Art, but the twins remained asleep in their bunk bed against the opposite wall.
“Huh? I didn’t say anything,” Art replied.
“Oh, I thought I heard you talking.” She sat up, yawned, and stretched her arms.
“Nope.”
“Okay, then.”
Art had been snapped out of his solitary moment and back into reality, so he got out of bed and went into the living room in his pj’s. He saw his dad asleep in the recliner in front of the TV. Empty brown beer bottles stood on top of the stack of milk crates that served as a side table. Art figured his mom got up in the middle of the night to turn off the TV while Albert was passed out there and then went back to sleep comfortably alone, far from the drunken snoring. She’d be out of their room soon to wake her husband so he could start breakfast.
Before long, everyone was awake, and they were eating bacon, eggs, and white toast at the table. There was little small talk. Albert wasn’t as jovial as the evening before, and Art could smell the alcohol on his breath from his seat beside him. They ate and cleaned up together, and everyone was off to enjoy their Saturday.
Art went to his room, changed into an older pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and made his way through the kitchen to the front door. Theresa was doing the dishes at the sink with her back to him.
“Okay, I’m leaving now, Mom,” he said.
“Mm-hmm,” she mumbled.
“I’ll be home by lunch.”
“Better be. Your dad needs that wood piled.”
Because he was heading out alone and not escorting his younger siblings to or from school, Art could ride his bike to Merle’s. It was a simple one-gear red-and-white BMX bike that Albert bought secondhand from one of his coworkers at the mill. Nothing flashy, but it did its job getting the twelve-year-old from A to B on the reserve. With most homes spread apart in the small community, bicycle travel was essential for anyone too young to drive a car.
Art pedaled along the dirt road as the sun hovered above the trees. It melted away
the late-summer morning chill, and he was comfortable rolling along in his T-shirt. The community slowly woke with the warming daylight, and some people emerged from their homes as Art rode by, whether to undertake the day’s yard work, get in their cars to drive to town, or clean up from a party the night before.
Most of the homes were two- and three-bedroom bungalows like his family’s. Many of them were built just two decades earlier, in the 1960s. Paint of various dull colors blistered and chipped off the sides of the houses. Blankets hung in some windows as makeshift curtains. Newer homes were prefabricated: paid for by government funding under treaty obligations and trucked in from the city.
It wasn’t a rich community. The ancestors of its residents were placed on this small reserve when European settlers created their own country on this land. Their traditional ways of life, including regular migration throughout the land and seasonal farming, came to an end. Additional measures to erase culture followed, like placing children—including Art’s own parents—in church-run schools, where many endured abuse for speaking their language and practicing their culture.
Art was familiar with this history. That’s why they didn’t speak their native language in their home. They also never talked about the ceremonies and culture that flourished among their people prior to being colonized. So he relied on Merle to fill in the gaps, in hopes of understanding more about himself and his people’s history.
He rode past the white church—the tallest building in the community—and turned gently onto a bumpy dirt path on the other side of the road. It wasn’t wide enough for a car, but it could accommodate a wagon, a cart, or of course, a boy’s bicycle. Merle lived deep in the bush, and it took another five minutes for Art to maneuver the stones and ruts on the path and ride all the way to his house. It was a humble cabin nestled in the forest, surrounded by tall pine and spruce trees.
